Patton Oswalt Talks ‘I Love My Dad,’ Cringe Comedy and Cancel Culture

variety.com:

Jenelle Riley Deputy Awards, Features EditorPatton Oswalt is OK with making you squirm. After all, the actor and comic once performed a number called “The Cringe” on an episode of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” a title that could describe his approach to cracking people up. “Real comedy comes from those moments,” Oswalt says. “I fully ascribe to Tracy Morgan’s maxim that ‘Cool is the enemy of funny.’ Cringe and awkwardness are real humanity, and that’s where the real funny stuff comes from.”  A comic’s comic adored by peers and audiences for wry, observational humor that often comes at his own expense, he’s also proven to be a skilled dramatic actor, recently playing Nixon’s hatchet man Charles Colson in the limited series “Gaslit.”   But his new film, “I Love My Dad,” ups the ante in discomfort while offering Oswalt a showcase role that is alternately hilarious and tragic.

The film was written and directed by James Morosini, and loosely based on his own true story. Morosini also stars as Franklin, a young man who cuts his father, Chuck (Oswalt), out of his life.

Desperate to reconnect, Chuck creates a fake Facebook profile based on a young woman he knows — and ends up catfishing his son.

The film, which won the audience and grand jury awards at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, defies simple explanation, which was a positive in Oswalt’s book. “It’s a genuinely rich, complicated story,” he says. “And any movie that defies easy categorization, I’m rooting for.”  Morosini has nothing but praise for his leading man. “He has a natural ability to balance the light and the dark,” says the filmmaker. “He can bring levity to impossibly dark subjects.